"dramatic" and/or "edgy" (see also: Gatorade/Nike)

[Anthony Martinez]

I figured I'd stray a bit from my natural light work and dust off some old equipment so I'd feel somewhat confident in my ability to use some new equipment the UPS man brought me today.

My initial flash setup consisted entirely of hotshoe flashes, 3x Vivitar 285HVs to be exact. To sync, I went all Pocket Wizards. This was before the TTL ones were even discussed, but that's fine because I don't do E-TTL anyway. Now, I did not need new lights. I just wanted one. When my cameras were tools for making money with which I would then pay my rent, my 285s never let me down. Work with what you have, and all that jazz.

Two examples of what can be done using only the contents of one, or two, of the "Strobist Kits" available from mpex are below. In both instances 285HVs are at 1/4 power, popped into a barely open soft silver umbrella (the poor man's softbox) positioned very close to the subject (me, sorry - no pretty girls available at the moment just my mug) and just out side the frame.

f/8, 1/200s, ISO250. Processing limited to a "Tri-X" preset in LR3. 2x 285HV - left and right. The leading edge of the collapsed umbrellas are maybe 2" forward of the plane that would go across the tip of my nose putting the bulk of the beams across my shoulders and back.



Same settings as above but with one 285HV pointed right at my face. I'm actually holding an umbrella swivel with the collapsed umbrella, strobe, and trigger dangling from it in my right hand and my 5D Mark II in my left hand. Kinda thought I was going to drop the Canon a few times. Glad I didn't. I shaved too. Same post preset.



Of course I couldn't pass up the opportunity to play with my new light, so here it is. Both shots are f/8, 1/200s, ISO 100 with the Einstein 640 at 1/96 power fired into a 28" beauty dish with a diffuser in place. I was basically using my Canon as a super expensive light meter for my Mamiya C3. I shot a roll of Delta 100 I'll develop later. The light was up high, camera left, and angled downward just outside of the frame. Same processing as above.






So what's the point to all of this? Big light source, close to the subject, shot at max sync = "dramatic" or "edgy" light that falls off very quickly (yay inverse square law). The first two were shot in a pretty bright room with a window open during the day. The last two were shot in an off-white room with plenty of surfaces to bounce light around. The post processing really didn't kill the shadows nearly as much as it pushed some of the highlights into overdrive.

If you're looking for the "edgy" look Nike and Gatorade have used a lot lately, you don't need to spend a ton of money to do it. Even a pair of 250W worklights from Home Depot will get the job done (you'll just melt in the process).

[DigMe]

In the recent senior shoot of a football player that I posted here I was definitely thinking along the lines of Gatorade ad and other edgy portraiture of sports figures that I've seen. I achieved my results with speedlights. 1 SB-600 in a cowboystudio softbox via TTL cord with -something EV front camera right, 1 YN-560 on the side of the face through an Opteka speedgrid rear of subject camera left and bare YN-560 rear of subject camera right. Obviously the post-processing was a big factor in the final look for me.

I know you've already seen it, Anthony, but I hope that it's OK for me to post one of the resulting pics in your thread:



The original version that I came up with is more desaturated but not quite b&w. I go back and forth on which version I like more. I think I like the desaturated version a bit more right now.

brad

[Anthony Martinez]

Don't mind at all, Brad.

[brad]

This one was lit similarly... one off camera flash in a Denny's Lil' Blaster octobox on camera left in front of the subject... another behind and bare to camera right.

[khatley]

I will play along!